Sunday, June 26, 2011

NHL Realignment...

So, the Atlanta Thrashers have been sold and are moving back to Winnipeg this season.

That means that a team that is north and west of Minnesota will be playing in the Southeast Division in the NHL this season. That just simply can't happen. The NHL had said in the past that if a team were to move west to Winnipeg, it would be possible that the Detroit Red Wings would be moved to the Eastern Conference, as they are the Eastern most team that is still in the Western Conference.

But today, the NHL began talking about a total realignment.

Currently, there are two conferences with three divisions in each. Each division has five teams in it. They are currently set up in the Western Conference as the Central, Northwest, and Pacific divisions. In the Eastern Conference they are the Atlantic, Northeast, and Southeast divisions.

Teams, for the most part, are aligned geographically. It works for the most part, but a couple of teams are pretty far east and still in the Western Conference...most notably the Red Wings.

But again, back to that total realignment. Basically, the NHL has said that instead of simply swapping teams, they are interested in completely revamping the current system. They want to stay a two conference system (obviously) but go to two divisions in each, with an eight team division and a seven team division in each conference.

Well, of course, this means that fans everywhere can start talking about how they would want to see the league aligned, and I figured that this would be a great time for me to go ahead and throw my idea in there.

For starters, I have kept the system based as best as possible on geographical region. Here are my ideas for the regions, and which teams would be in them...

First would be a simple thing...we are dropping the whole Western Conference and Eastern Conference, and going back to the Clarence Campbell Conference and the Prince of Wales Conference. Hockey is a sport that has deep roots in many of it's traditions, and it's time to bring these traditional names back. Again, because of the tradition, we are going to keep the Atlantic and Pacific division names that have been used for the past several years. No reason to get rid of everything that is new, right??